Gábor A. Somorjai | |
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Born | |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Budapest University of Technology and Economics |
Notable work | University of California, Berkeley |
Awards | Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1998) National Medal of Science (2001) Irving Langmuir Award (2007) William H. Nichols Medal (2015) Enrico Fermi Award (2023) |
Gabor A. Somorjai (born May 4, 1935) is a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a leading researcher in the field of surface chemistry and catalysis, especially the catalytic effects of metal surfaces on gas-phase reactions ("heterogeneous catalysis"). For his contributions to the field, Somorjai won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1998, [1] the Linus Pauling Award [ citation needed ] in 2000, the National Medal of Science [ citation needed ] in 2002, the Priestley Medal in 2008, [2] the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Science and the NAS Award in Chemical Sciences in 2013.[ citation needed ] In April 2015, Somorjai was awarded the American Chemical Society's William H. Nichols Medal. [3]
Somorjai was born in Budapest in 1935 to Jewish parents. He was saved from the Nazis when his mother sought the assistance of Raoul Wallenberg in 1944 who issued Swedish passports to Somorjai's mother, himself and his sister saving them from the Nazi death camps. [4] While Somorjai's father ended up in the camp system, he was fortunate to survive but many of Somorjai's extended family ended up in the camp system.
He was studying chemical engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in 1956. As a participant in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Somorjai left Hungary to go to the US after the Soviet invasion. [5] Along with other Hungarian immigrants, Somorjai enrolled in graduate study at Berkeley and obtained his doctorate in 1960. He joined IBM's research staff in Yorktown Heights, New York for a few years but returned to Berkeley as an assistant professor in 1964.
The introduction of new technology such as low-energy electron diffraction revolutionised the study of surfaces in the 1950s and 1960s. However, early studies were limited to surfaces such as silicon, important for its electrical properties. In contrast, Somorjai was interested in surfaces such as platinum known for its chemical properties.
Somorjai discovered that the defects on surfaces are where catalytic reactions take place. When these defects break, new bonds are formed between atoms leading to complex organic compounds such as naphtha to be converted into gasoline as an example. These findings led to greater understanding of subjects such as adhesion, lubrication, friction and adsorption. His research also has important implications such as nanotechnology.
In the 1990s, Somorjai started working with physicist Y. R. Shen on developing a technique known as Sum Frequency Generation Spectroscopy [6] to study surface reactions without the need for a vacuum chamber. He is also studying surface reactions in nanotechnology at the atomic and molecular level using atomic force microscopy and scanning tunnelling microscopy, both of which can be used without vacuum.
Somorjai's expertise in surfaces was used as a consultant to the 2002 Winter Olympics where he gave advice on how to make ice-skating surfaces as fast as possible. Somorjai's research had shed new light on ice, demonstrating that skaters skated on a top-layer of rapidly vibrating molecules, [7] rather than on a layer of liquid water on top of the ice acting as a lubricant, which had previously been the generally accepted explanation for the slipperiness of ice.
During his career, Somorjai has published more than one thousand papers and three textbooks on surface chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis. He is now the most-often cited person in the fields of surface chemistry and catalysis.
Somorjai was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1979 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983. He was awarded the Wolf Foundation Prize in Chemistry in 1998 for his contribution to chemistry, sharing the honor with Professor Gerhard Ertl of the Fritz-Haber Institute in Berlin. Somorjai was awarded the National Medal of Science for his contribution as a chemist in 2002. The American Chemical Society has also awarded him the Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry and the Adamson Award in Surface Chemistry. In 2002, he was awarded the status of University Professor across the University of California network, an honor he shares with two dozen other academics. In 2004 he won the F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the American Chemical Society. In 2008 he received the Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society, for his "extraordinarily creative and original contributions to surface science and catalysis". [2] In 2009 he was named a Miller Senior Fellow of the Miller Institute at the University of California Berkeley. He was awarded the prestigious 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Science. In addition he was also awarded in 2010 the ENI New Frontiers of Hydrocarbons Prize and the Honda Prize. The recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Gerhard Ertl, and other members of the surface science community, were surprised and mystified by the Nobel Prize committee's decision to pass over Somorjai, awarding the prize for surface-chemistry to Ertl alone. [8] [9] [10] In 2009 Somorjai was recipient of the Reed M. Izatt and James J. Christensen Lectureship. In 2013 Somorjai was awarded the National Academy of Sciences NAS Award in Chemical Sciences. [11] In April 2015, Somorjai was awarded the American Chemical Society's William H. Nichols Medal. [3] Most recently, in 2023, Somorjai was recipient of the Enrico Fermi Award along with Darleane C. Hoffman.
The Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Catalysis, consisting of US$5,000 and a certificate, is given annually to recognize outstanding research in the field of catalysis. [12] The award is sponsored by the Gabor A. and Judith K. Somorjai Endowment Fund. [13]
Previous recipients have been :
Established in 2011, the Gabor A. and Judith K. Somorjai Visiting Miller Professorship Award is one of the programs of the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California Berkeley. The Somorjais' wishes in the establishment of this award is to support visiting scientists in the broad field of chemical sciences for a one-month term in the Miller Institute. [15] The first award was granted in 2013 to Angelos Michaelides.
Recipients include :
Ira Remsen was an American chemist who discovered the artificial sweetener saccharin along with Constantin Fahlberg. He was the second president of Johns Hopkins University.
George Andrew Olah was a Hungarian-American chemist. His research involved the generation and reactivity of carbocations via superacids. For this research, Olah was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1994 "for his contribution to carbocation chemistry." He was also awarded the Priestley Medal, the highest honor granted by the American Chemical Society and F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the American Chemical Society in 1996.
Henry Taube, was a Canadian-born American chemist who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his work in the mechanisms of electron-transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes." He was the second Canadian-born chemist to win the Nobel Prize, and remains the only Saskatchewanian-born Nobel laureate. Taube completed his undergraduate and master's degrees at the University of Saskatchewan, and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. After finishing graduate school, Taube worked at Cornell University, the University of Chicago and Stanford University.
Armand Paul Alivisatos is an American chemist and academic administrator who has served as the 14th president of the University of Chicago since September 2021. He is a pioneer in nanomaterials development and an authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use in biomedical and renewable energy applications. He was ranked fifth among the world's top 100 chemists for the period 2000–2010 in the list released by Thomson Reuters.
Frank Albert Cotton FRS was an American chemist. He was the W.T. Doherty-Welch Foundation Chair and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M University. He authored over 1600 scientific articles. Cotton was recognized for his research on the chemistry of the transition metals.
Tobin Jay Marks is the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professor of Catalytic Chemistry, Professor of Material Science and Engineering, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Professor of Applied Physics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Among the themes of his research are synthetic organo-f-element and early-transition metal organometallic chemistry, polymer chemistry, materials chemistry, homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, molecule-based photonic materials, superconductivity, metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, and biological aspects of transition metal chemistry.
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Gerhard Ertl is a German physicist and a Professor emeritus at the Department of Physical Chemistry, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany. Ertl's research laid the foundation of modern surface chemistry, which has helped explain how fuel cells produce energy without pollution, how catalytic converters clean up car exhausts and even why iron rusts, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
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Omar M. Yaghi is the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, the Founding Director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute, and an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences as well as the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Jens Kehlet Nørskov is the Villum Kann Rasmussen professor at the Technical University of Denmark. He is a Danish physicist most notable for his work on theoretical description of surfaces, catalysis, materials, nanostructures, and biomolecules.
Prof. Dr. Avel·lí Corma i Canós is a Valencian (Spain) chemist distinguished for his world-leading work on heterogeneous catalysis.
Harold S. "Hal" Johnston was an American scientist who studied chemical kinetics and atmospheric chemistry. After beginning his teaching career at Stanford University, he was a faculty member and administrator at the University of California, Berkeley for nearly 35 years. In 1971, Johnston authored a paper suggesting that environmental pollutants could erode the ozone layer.
Manos Mavrikakis is a Greek–American chemical engineer. He is the Paul A. Elfers Professor and the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Mavrikakis is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society, and American Vacuum Society.
Peter Strasser is a German chemist. He is the winner of the 2021 Faraday Medal.
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